Having been outscored 12-1 in the past two ice hockey matches and now tied in the series at two games apiece. That dead quiet you hear on the West Coast tonight is the shocked silence of hard core Canucks fans and the vacuum of tens of thousands of bandwagon fans who have suddenly disappeared.

FOR HEAVENS SAKES VAN

This was the scene exactly 1 hour after the Game three loss on the streets of Vancouver. Can you see all the little people in the street looking bored and wishing they had someone to pepper spray into another dimension? That's the Vancouver Police, employed at great expense by the City of Vancouver to control the throngs of fans who showed up after wins in Games 1 and 2.

They were expecting Mardi Gras after Game 3 and instead got a live version of that show Life After People.

Somewhere in the last two games the Canucks have fumbled their opportunity to be Canada's team and the Canucks and their fans are getting ripped to shreds on websites, blogs and in the twittersphere all over the world. Many fans can't figure out why.

Here. We will give you our best guess.

TAKE IT FROM A LOSER-HARDCORE FAN

We consider ourselves to be a die hard fan of the Edmonton Oilers. As such our joy-misery experience can be best demonstrated with the graph above. We would literally give both of our eyes and one of our legs for the Oilers to have just blown a 2-0 2011 Stanley Cup series lead. We would kill any number of people just to get the Oilers to be swept in a single round.

Things are so dire of late that we actually tweeted Oilers D Ryan Whitney who indicated he was at the game in Boston tonight, telling him to "soak in the atmosphere so you will be ready for big Oilers playoff games soon."

What kind of loser does this sort of thing? The kind of loser that needs to keep hope alive by any means necessary.

TOO MANY OF YOU LOOK LIKE THIS

From the impossibly ignorant move of relighting the Olympic Flame on behalf of Canada to having only ghosts in the streets three games later. How can a City run so hot and cold at the exact same time? It is this idea of bandwagon jumping apathy mixed with the high handed belief that you are "Canada's Team" that is driving so many into the waiting arms of the Temporary Boston Bruins fans.

Part of the fun of living and dying with a hockey team is that you earn your dizzying highs by experiencing many terrifying lows. You are with them for the ups and the downs all the way through and that is the experience that makes a die hard fan.

There are tons of hard core Canucks fans we have encountered on twitter and in real life who are in complete shambles tonight. Good hard working types who can recall struggling through the days of Corey Hirsch and Ed Jovonovski in the hopes that the Canucks would one day win the Cup.

They remember the failed Mark Messier experiement when Veteran leadership was brought in at an extremely high cost to put the team over the top in the late 1990s only to see an expensive trip to the bottom of the NHL.

Now here they are in what should be their finest series in the past 17 years and they are spending half their time defending their team and half their time defending their fellow fans. These folks deserve a Cup more than a great many hockey fans in Canada.

Besmirched by the newly minted Canucks fans that show up by the tens of thousands only to disappear into the ether hours later, they deserve better than this. The City of Vancouver - arguably one of the finest places in the world - deserves better than this.

Hell even the Vancouver Canucks deserve better.

Enough is enough fair weather Canucks fans. Don't run away into your million dollar condos, fresh fish restaurants and movie sets. Come out into the streets and support the Canucks on the eve of an absolutely monumental Game 5.

Blog so hard motherf**ckers try and find me.
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Wow, great post! I was expecting another "Eat it Van fans!" type of rant but you popped the collar of class and stepped it up a notch with a very perceptive and insiteful view of why the majority of Canuck fans suck. To be honest I couldn't agree more. Fair weather fans are no fans at all; they're just the random people who crash parties and trash homes of people they've never met.

Regarding the fans, the picture of them cheering Luongo getting pulled pretty much summed them up nicely.

You are in game 4 of the stanley cup finals and noteven in dnager of going down in games for the series and you cheer your #1 goalie getting pulled? The guy that got you there?

If they aren't able to recognize that they need to stand by their player at that point in time, they never will.

Shameful really.

Many fan don't really understand how big an impact fan support can have on a players psyce. If Luongo is back to a ton of Self doubt there are of coarse many factors but the fans are indeed one of them. So is shoddy D-fence and a coach who rules with his heart not his mind. I have a hard time with this series I hate all whinny Canuck fans, I hate the Twins( I think its the Grapes influence and statements about Canadian heart) I hate most of there Jersey Logos. (except the first and the Latest) But I feel for my friends who are thick and thin fans I want them to experience the joy I have known. The joy of cheering for a Stanley cup winning team.

First I have to say I am a huge fan of the site and a proud new member of Oiler Nation.

Regarding the series, I, like most of those posting, have enjoyed the last two games immensely (proof positive when my neighbors complained about the noise after each Bruins goal).

But in trying to be objective, I have to say maybe its just me, but isnt there something distinctly difficult about trying to like the Canucks. Looking back at the Flames run, or the Sens run, I think it was a bit easier to accept the fact they might win. Perhaps its the fact they were underdogs, much like our own boys in their run.

But these Canucks, the arrogance from Kesler and Bieksa every time I see a clip makes me want to seriously wish I could get a shot in. There is just something about this team that causes that undeniable hate in me, and I think a lot of other Canadians feel the same way. And because of that disgust I find it hard to feel any empathy for a Canuck fan, hardcore or otherwise.

No humility, no sense of gratitude for being in the final, all I sense is entitlement and no I will not be pleased if that entitlement is ever rewarded with a cup win.

Misery?...you have no idea what it was like being a Canucks fan during most of the 80s, before Trevor Linden and Pat Quinn. Save that one brief fluke-out to the Finals in 1982.

What's a couple more blow-outs? I may be the only Canucks fan who thought so, but the Canucks were pretty good last night (I'm not sure if the scoring chance count bears me out, but the corsi seems to support me). Tim Thomas was spectacular, and my hat off to him. I heard he could play this way, and now I'm seeing it with my own eyes.

First I have to say I am a huge fan of the site and a proud new member of Oiler Nation.

Regarding the series, I, like most of those posting, have enjoyed the last two games immensely (proof positive when my neighbors complained about the noise after each Bruins goal).

But in trying to be objective, I have to say maybe its just me, but isnt there something distinctly difficult about trying to like the Canucks. Looking back at the Flames run, or the Sens run, I think it was a bit easier to accept the fact they might win. Perhaps its the fact they were underdogs, much like our own boys in their run.

But these Canucks, the arrogance from Kesler and Bieksa every time I see a clip makes me want to seriously wish I could get a shot in. There is just something about this team that causes that undeniable hate in me, and I think a lot of other Canadians feel the same way. And because of that disgust I find it hard to feel any empathy for a Canuck fan, hardcore or otherwise.

No humility, no sense of gratitude for being in the final, all I sense is entitlement and no I will not be pleased if that entitlement is ever rewarded with a cup win.

I agree I so love Canada, Hockey, Maple syrup and What happened in the Olympics BUT I hate a lot of those same things as you described about Vancouver. When Calgary was there in 04 I really did cheer for them but it is neigh impossible right now to cheer for Vancouver. Sad Really.

I agree I so love Canada, Hockey, Maple syrup and What happened in the Olympics BUT I hate a lot of those same things as you described about Vancouver. When Calgary was there in 04 I really did cheer for them but it is neigh impossible right now to cheer for Vancouver. Sad Really.

During the Calgary run, my heart betrayed me; and I was almost able to set aside the hate I had been carrying for that franchise since 1986... Then Sutter had his famous "The whole league is against us" press conference: and my hate was fully recharged.

Gillis, Kesler, Burrows, and Company keep my hate tank on full: I'm praying for a complete Canuck collapse; and should it happen: I will enjoy it without apology.

Chiming in from the south, I too could never cheer for that team. All the "cheer Canada" arguements aside, there is nothing endearing about that team. The arrogance and ignorance of both their fans (some exclusions apply) and their players (burrows, kesler, lapierre, bieksa,etc) makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little at the thought of them raising the cup.

It was no different in 04 for me either. Replace the aforemntioned players with ruutu, jovanoski, cloutier, matt cooke and bertuzzi and you'd think it was the same team.

As an aside, if I could play one shift in the Show, and only one shift, I'd goon burrows. My life would be complete.

Tim Thomas has been nothing short of incredible. Making wacky stops, laying monster hits, and fighting with skaters in the blue paint. He might have dethroned the Dos Equis guy as the Most Interesting Man in the World since the playoffs started.

EA Sports predicted the winners in each series (except 1 i think?) but they didn't account for massive CHOKAGE because it's actually hard to do that in a video game. Computers are smarter than humans, you see, and a computer would ask "why would you want to suck so bad? isn't that counter-intuitive?"

Reminds me of an early Jim Carrey joke "Driving into oncoming traffic is counterproductive!"

We might just be witnessing the biggest choke job of all time. Might.

If - Boston can keep up the rough stuff and keep nailing Sedin/Kesler/Burrows

If - Thomas can play the way he's been playing

If - the Boston D can play the way they've been playing infront of Thomas

I will celebrate without remorse if Boston wins this series. I have a feeling Gm5 will be a little closer to start out, but by the end I think Boston flies home with a 3-2 lead. I am thinking Gm5 will be 3-1 Boston.

You can count me as someone who was never on the bandwagon to begin with.

I always get a little chuckle out of the notion that there are people who are willing to drop everything and cheer for a team in the playoffs just because it’s from Canada.

Never allow anybody to convince you to root for an NHL team you would never normally root for just because it's the playoffs. And that especially includes the Canadian teams.

One of the fun things about being a Canadian hockey fan means hating the other teams in our Dominion. It's what makes hockey work in this country. Do you think Montreal fans pulled for Toronto back in the days of the Original Six? No, siree.

I'm sure there's lots of good, patriotic-type of citizens who think country-first, favourite-team second. But they are part of a new breed of Canadian hockey fan that probably never existed 15 or 20 years ago.

In the old days, back when the Red Wings were a laughingstock and the Avalanche and Coyotes were called the Nordiques and Jets, loyal hockey fans rarely dropped one loyalty for another. Not even on national television.

In 1987, the Stanley Cup final between the Philadelphia Flyers and Oilers went to a seventh game in Edmonton. CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, in its standard unite-the-nation practice, stationed reporters at Stanley Cup house parties in three Canadian cities - Corner Brook, Nfld., Regina, Sask., and Vancouver. The job of the correspondents was to find out who was cheering for who.

Well, it quickly became obvious that everybody - east, west and central - hated the Oilers with a passion.

It wasn't even close. Every time the studio host went live to one of the parties, it would be in the middle of a charming chant of "Gretzky sucks!" or "Messier sucks!" or "Oilers suck!"

The Oilers, of course, had arguably their greatest lineup ever, and went on to win Game 7 and the Cup.

Dave Billington, the Edmonton Sun's TV columnist at the time, wrote about CBC's fact-finding mission in his paper's Stanley Cup edition the next day (which I still have).
"It was a good idea, but about the only thing which emerged was the fact that, in spite of their skills, the Edmonton Oilers are thoroughly disliked across the country, except in their own hometown."

In other words, neither patriotism nor the stick-swinging Flyer goalie Ron Hextall could keep three fairly distinctive regions from holding back their hatred of the NHL's greatest offensive machine and its greatest player, whom, if memory serves, may have also been from Canada.

That’s the NHL I remember and those are the Canadian hockey fans I respect most.

You hit the nail on the head Wanye. What I wouldn't give to be 2 wins away from winning the Stanley Cup with 2 out of 3 games at home. Real, diehard Vancouver fans have paid their dues. These fairweather fans seem spoiled and I don't understand how that can happen when your team has never won before. This should be new, fresh and a special moment for all of B.C. Instead it's painting a poor image of what is otherwise a wonderful city.

Pile on all you want haters, because victory will be that much sweeter when the Nucks win in 6. I find it funny how you guys go on and off the wagon. I also find it HILARIOUS how many Nucks car flags there are in ye old cowtown.

Pile on all you want haters, because victory will be that much sweeter when the Nucks win in 6. I find it funny how you guys go on and off the wagon. I also find it HILARIOUS how many Nucks car flags there are in ye old cowtown.

Nucks will be fine. BOOK IT

Dear Todd,

You "find it funny how YOU GUYS go on and off the wagon"??? I really hope that isnt in reference to oilerfan?

Brother(/sister), do you see how many comments are on every single article, ALL YEAR LONG. Do I need to remind you that we've been in 30th for 2 years in a row? Do I also need to remind you that there is still about a 3 yr wait for season tickets and that theres been sellouts for the last hundredkijihababillion games?

Its called oilersnation for a reason "dude".

PS - obviously youre fan brain is not well developed because OILERSnation could give 1 let alone 2 sh1t$ about cowtown. Ive seen maybe 4 carflags through the entire playoffs in yeg. Ive seen just as many bruins flags.

The only thing is that this article is also placed on Flames Nation as well. If Todd is taking shots at the Calgary folk then I'm OK with it.

Of course he is a Canucks fan so either way he still loses.

You are wiser than I rubbertrout. I didn't think Wanye knew how to multiple post! Now wonder why he was so weak in this article!?!?

And yes, lose is what the canucks and fans will do!!! Muahahahahahaha .............please dont win

In these games, I watch and cheer 5000000000000% against the canucks but when they win, it doesnt hurt. This is where its different watchin the oilers for me. Those losses all hurt, every goal, scoring chance and lost fight

Yeah, keep playing "pretty good" and enjoy watching the Bruins run all over you again on Friday night. Twist the numbers around anyway you like, but you were dominated for most of the game.

"Dominated for most of the game" ... actually those who scored it disagree. Of course, why let facts bother you. I have to say, I enjoyed watching the Bruins run all over me again last night. At least, given your attitude to facts, that's probably how you saw it, right?